Profound desolation descended on him as he watched the receding stars. He felt desolate and forlorn, like a child shut out of a bright room, left out of everything. And he longed, with a sudden nostalgic yearning, to be included in life again — in the human family circle. He couldn’t bear this exclusion, being shut out in the lonely dark.
But nor could he bear to go back to his life in the world. No, that was not the way. He had come too far already, and could now only go on, further still, away from all he had been.
He would follow the stars before they vanished completely.
The sudden impulse struck with a force that carried him with it… onwards… forwards… away from all the old ache and isolation of consciousness. Parting the snow with his hands like a diver, he pushed the white curtain aside.
And the wave of his destiny, swelling towards a climax, swept him on its forward rush to the climax of breaking; all the elements of his being caught up by the irresistible surge, racing towards dissolution. As he’d plunged into the abyss of sleep, he now abandoned himself to this torrential flood, boundless, impersonal, indistinguishable from the military power to which he was dedicated; hurtling on, in obedience to fate’s higher command, further and further from everything, into the unknown.
~ ~ ~
There follow pages from an original draft of Anna Kavan’s typescript reproduced in facsimile.
